ELEVEN

Outside of town, night fell over the battlefield, its full weight sinking fast over the star-rattled sky.

Campfires dotted the hillside where the men bivouacked, re-enactors on both sides hunkered in front of their tents, drinking from tin cups, scraping food off plates, talking in the hushed tones of men away from their families and homes. Corncob pipes were produced, muskets disassembled and lovingly cleaned and oiled by lantern-light, the old rituals brought out and pored over one more time.

Here and there cell phones shone between the trees like blue fireflies as one man or another sneaked a quiet call to a wife or girlfriend.

Private Terry Johnson sat in front of the fire with his banjo, plucking out the first plaintive notes of ‘My Old Kentucky Home.’ He played softly, almost to himself, unselfconsciously. It was late now, and most of the 32^nd had already bunked down for the night in preparation for the long march in the morning.

The only other sounds were the crackling of the fire and the nickering of the several dozen horses corralled near the cavalry troops, as the animals too settled down for the night.

“Know any Coldplay?”

Johnson flinched a little in surprise and stopped plucking. Phil Oiler—also known as Norwalk Pettigrew, of the 32^nd Georgia—sat down on a stump next to him.

“Oh,” he said. “Hey, Phil.”

“Call me Norrie.” Oiler leaned his musket against one of the big stones that formed the fire-pit and brought out his bayonet, wiping it with a chamois. “That was my guy’s nickname.”

“Cool.” Johnson started to put the banjo aside, and Oiler stopped him.

“No, man, keep playing. In the camps that was what kept the men’s spirits up.” Reaching into his jacket, he brought out a dented metal flask, removed the cap and held it out. “Whiskey?”

“Thanks.” Johnson tipped it back and took a sip, letting it burn. It was good, smooth stuff, probably not what the boys on the battlefield had sipped a hundred and fifty years earlier, but who knew? This was the South, after all. Maybe it was even better then.

“Much appreciated.”

“That’s an authentic Civil War flask, by the way,” Oiler said. “1860s.”

“Pretty cool.”

“Set me back a pretty penny, but it’s worth it.” He fell silent, regarding the flask in the firelight. “You know any more songs?”

“Just a handful, really. ‘Foggy Mountain Breakdown,’ and the first part of ‘The Rainbow Connection,’ that’s about it.”

Oiler sighed and placing the bayonet on a piece of cloth sat back in the flickering firelight.

After a moment of silence, Johnson picked listlessly at the banjo while casting about for something to say. He was relatively new to the 32^nd, having only joined up a few months earlier, after his wife left him for some orthodontist that she’d met online. The loneliness had driven him to seek out men with similar interests. He didn’t know Oiler very well, except that the man sold insurance and had a family somewhere in Atlanta.

Oiler, for his part, didn’t seem to mind the silence. He passed the flask back again, nodding his encouragement, and Johnson took another pull of whiskey. All around them the night intensified, gaining bulk and breadth until the hillside and trees and everything outside the campfire’s immediate glow was rendered in varying shades of blackness.

“Almost feels like 1863,” Oiler said, “doesn’t it? So still...”

“Yeah.”

“Here, let me show you something,” Oiler said. He sounded different now, his voice soft and strange. The fire crackled and popped hypnotically in front of them.

“What is it?” Johnson asked.

Oiler didn’t answer right away. For a moment the flames guttered low, dropping them into near-total darkness.

When the fire brightened again, Johnson thought he saw something around the other man’s neck, just for an instant. Then it was gone, a trick of the shadows. He rubbed his eyes.

It has to be the whiskey, he thought. I’m seeing things.

“Phil...”

“Call me Norrie.” Oiler was smiling now. “Did you see it?”

“Did I see... what?”

“I know more about Jubal Beauchamp than what I let on,” Oiler said. “A lot more.”

“You mean Dave?”

Oiler shook his head and smiled.

“He let me try it on for myself, you know—around my own neck. And it felt good.”

Johnson stood up a little unsteadily. Maybe he was drunker than he thought.

It was time for bed.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Oiler’s voice asked gently.

“I—I’m just—”

Sudden, shocking pain exploded through his foot, erupting up his leg. Looking down, he saw that Oiler had jammed his bayonet down through his boot, impaling his foot directly into the ground.

Before Johnson could even scream or get loose, Oiler yanked the blade free and landed on top of him, clapping a hand over his mouth and pinning him to the ground, holding him in the dirt with the full weight of his body.

Johnson fought to get free, but Oiler was too strong. One of them kicked over the banjo in the struggle, knocking it into the fire where it emitted sour little blunks and twangs. Then Oiler’s face was right next to his, close enough that he could feel the other man’s chin-stubble scrape against his cheek and smell the whiskey on his breath.

There’s no noose around his neck, Johnson thought dizzily. There’s nothing there at all.

“War is hell,” Oiler whispered in his ear.

He seemed impossibly strong, an instrument of coiled muscle. Vaguely, through his agony, Johnson realized that smells were pouring off the other man’s skin in waves: alcohol, tobacco, and something else, the stink of a moldy old cellar. “Welcome to it.”

“Please,” Johnson muttered into the other man’s palm.

“Put this in your mouth.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

Johnson looked down and saw the bayonet poised just below his chin.

“Please. No.”

Oiler slammed the blade’s tip upward, cracking Johnson’s teeth. He gagged as the oily metal invaded his mouth, pain spiking deep as the sharpened edge sliced through his lips and tongue. His sinuses began to fill with salty warmth. All his life he’d wondered what went through men’s minds as they faced death. Now he understood.

His thoughts circled back to his parents and his estranged wife and his sister in New Jersey, and all the things he’d never done and would never get to do. He tried to talk but his lips couldn’t form the words beyond a few desperate whining sounds. Tears flooded his eyes, spilling down his cheeks.

Above him, the stars had lost their shape—they shivered and streamed like mad planets against the outer wall of a universe that no longer made any sense.

Still pinning him, Oiler whispered something, speaking words in some other language that Johnson couldn’t understand.

He felt the blade jerk forward.

And then nothing.